#thought process coherently

[mischievous-thunder]

Take risks, Wade!

[fancygremlin]

Who’s the fire lit for?

In Part 45 we are introduced to Malam, a mysterious character who seems to enact justice for children who die unjustly.

He approaches Arthur, and seems surprised when he discovers that he is the one who lit the fire, as he expected a child to have done so.

I don’t think Malam’s expectations are completely unfounded, as it is not really present Arthur who lit the fire... but the child that went to the Boys' Brigade who did:

I think that Arthur unknowingly lit the fire both for Faroe and himself (or more correctly, his past child self). Malam was not called in by the fire to bring justice to just Faroe, but also to Arthur.

Arthur had been forced to metaphorically kill his child-self and his innocence and forced to grow up too quickly for his own good. His childhood had been cut short so suddenly and brutally by his parent’s death, a grief too big and complicated for a young child to understand and work through.

Even now, on the inside, Arthur is still that wounded and timid child. He is still carrying that pain with him. However, the hostility he had to live throughout his life only granted him more wounds and bruises. The soft, childlike and gentle parts of himself were hardened under layers and layers of scar tissue. Arthur had to learn pretty quickly that it was never safe enough for him to be kind and patient with himself. He was never given the time to process his traumas. No one taught him or showed him the love and care he so desperately needed and cried for so long for.

The hurt was drowned by more hurt and it was never tended to, never really cared for. But it never really disappeared or healed. It always stayed deep within him.

But now (finally), for the first time, Arthur’s most devastating traumas (the loss of his daughter, and the loss of his own innocence) have been recognised.

His childhood cry has been finally answered.

The kid Arthur was can finally rest now that Malam stopped by his fire.

[beaft]

wish it was more socially acceptable to just... stop talking. not forever, just for a while. sorry. no more words today. all used up. don't bother asking me questions because all i will do is stare at you

[vaguely-concerned]

...the 'almond room' thing in the unwanted guest IS a reference to/play on words on amygdala, right? (amygdala comes from the greek word for almond!) I didn't read that wrong? it is stupid sexy Ianthe coyly inviting Palamedes into a different chamber of her brain, as it were?

(also the pieces of meat -- the feeding or kissing, it's hard to say which of it all -- being present right from the beginning... ianthe DOES know exactly what has happened to her, doesn't she. palamedes is just cutting his way through her layers of denial and repression all merciless and scalpel-like to get her to admit it. or, she knows subconsciously at least -- each person comes in and feeds her something that she's helpless to stop from becoming a part of her even in her coffin, with bloody kisses. oh baby love is feeding me bad meat and I have no choice but to swallow it down. like yeah I suspect that is how human contact can feel when your sense of self and boundaries developed to be a specific kind of Fucked Up lol. that shit could make a person dream of being a diamond in a glass of wine; perfect, inviolable, untouchable, eternally separate and safe. In the words of Andrea Gibson in Prism:

They say the womb is where we learn love is knowing the cord that feeds you could at any moment wrap around your neck

that is quite literally ianthe's first introduction to love -- her sister, a cord around her neck. Corona is Ianthe's other self, a second soul running around outside of her body, and she seems to consider herself as responsible for (and entitled to) the preservation of Corona's soul as her own. the way this mirrors that growing up, Ianthe had to be two necromancers in one body to let them stay together. (twins and ghosts all the way down I guess.) she's still just trying to do the same thing, I think, she's simply put on some bigger boots about it. the central problem of lyctorhood, self vs. connection/love, rears its head once again -- Ianthe existentially wants total self-contained self-sufficiency, perfect control, sovereign sway and masterdom over her soul... but she wants that at the same time as being in uninterrupted (uninterruptible!), eternal and indelible intimacy with her sister, whose soul also cannot be allowed to change. which, you know. freedom and love don't coexist the way you want them to, Ianthe, no matter how clever you are there won't be a way to get what you want. (especially not with a sister whose idea of what love is seems to go more towards being consumed, made one, by whatever violence necessary -- 'she could have taken me'.) man. Ianthe is a spectacular and ongoing piece of work, but sometimes it's hard to see how she could ever have turned out otherwise considering the conditions she was born and raised under haha.

the two-way street of the horror of digestion, whether you're the devourer or the devouree. part of you in me, part of me in you, whether either of us likes it or not we're both changed by this. bad news: you can't get out of interconnectedness by finding the cleverest loophole around it, ianthe. nice try, though)

[chaeul]

I'm having big big feelings about the fact that Cir's room in his mom's house was even darker and colder than his condo, but then Phu calls and Cir sits down in the only warm source of lighting from outside, on the bed. The symbolism!!! *balls fists and screams* Phu's literally the light and warmth in his life. Reaching him even here and staying with him (peep the couch being completely in the dark in the beginning but then the sunlight reaches it when Cir sits on it while still talking to Phu) Just- haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Hhhhhh and they did such a good job making him seem so small when he gets back into his room, where his mom wants him to be. That room is huge and everything in it is so oversized that he literally seems so small and lost in it gahhhhhhhh What a tragically beautiful way to show how he feels

[tragicvampireromanceisland]

thinking so long and hard about joyness once more…like yesss they are very cute and sweet and all but i think them getting together even after their History is sooo interesting. like, does joy first start hanging out around sadness and talking with her more often out of guilt? is it performative? when does it stop being performative?? and at what point does joy realize it’s stopped being performative? how does joy feel when every single interaction she has with sadness after the events of the first movie are just like…constant reminders of how she screwed up with her prior? liking someone who makes her feel that bad when she normally never lingers on what she's done wrong just seems so counterintuitive (fun fact: joy has literally never genuinely apologized for anything she's done, across both movies. she's acknowledged and fixed her mistakes before, sure, but she has never expressed guilt so straightforwardly like that. is she simply incapable of it? or has she just...never given importance to feeling guilty before so long as she can just Fix her mistake? just something very interesting i've noticed...)!!

like, joy’s canonically admitted that she’s literally tried to kick sadness out of headquarters before. that’s truly how little joy thought of her before she got to know her better…she totally would have been fine with just. never seeing her again. imagine disliking your coworker THAT much since the very first day you met her and now you have feelings for her…?! not a possibility joy ever would have considered, and i think joy would struggle a Lot with coming to terms with that initially. she is the Queen of cognitive dissonance. of being Delusional. it’s HARD to shake off old habits just like that!! joy is someone who very much doesn’t fully acknowledge how she feels until it gets so intense it bubbles up to the surface and breaks through her usual demeanor (we’ve seen that both with how she’s gotten sad and angry before…who’s to say romance would not be the same. i think she’d just keep denying it until she just. has an Ah Shit moment with sadness one day. probably over something completely mundane).

and it certainly doesn’t help that sadness is, well. Sadness! she clearly admires joy from the very beginning even when joy treated her so poorly (knowing her she probably thought she deserved it…sigh). she’d literally just assume absolutely nothing would come out of her feelings. and you know she probably might even romanticize and Enjoy it in a weird way…i mean think about it. she canonically likes sad romance novels…this is her own "tragic romance" (apparently. SUPPOSEDLY) so i think she’d kind of insistently cling to that. define their entire relationship as unrequited and reallyyy lean into it and warp anything that happens otherwise to fit her little Doomed Yuri vision. she's observant as hell for pretty much everything, normally, but she just has goddamn Horse Blinders on for just this one thing specifically.

she’s just completely unaware of how fundamentally she’s changed joy and shattered her entire worldview (meanwhile joy is just busy having a whole crisis about exactly that). and NOW she has to deal with actually being treated like she matters, both by joy and the other emotions?? helloooo? she’s definitely got a lot to process by this point because Her entire way of living has changed too now in an entirely different direction.

AND then you add to that how it's pretty clear that sadness knows joy pretty well, but joy still has a Lot to learn about sadness because she never gave her a chance before...very much a recipe for guilt and confusion and miscommunication and other such weird occurrences to arise.

BASICALLY tldr theyre both kind of idiots and i think their dynamic is a little more complicated than people give it credit for. joyness is a veryyy. She fell first (sadness) she fell harder (joy) type of dynamic. To Me.

[echo-of-the-eye]

Can’t stop thinking about Viktor and Jon parallels cause I have tma brainrot and anytime I see anything even remotely similar I go “is that a magnus reference?”

Anyways thinking about the differences in the choices they did and did not make and how both of them came back from the dead and were involved in ending the world.

I talked a bit about it before but Jon chooses to come back to life and become a monster. Granted it wasn’t a fair choice but he did choose it. Meanwhile the end of the world was not his choice. As much as he thinks otherwise it was not his fault. He didn’t “accidentally” start the apocalypse, he wasn’t “manipulated into it” he straight up did not end the world. Jonah did. Using Jon. Yes he was manipulated to prepare for the ritual (still not his fault), but actually ending the world? Jonah did that. He straight up took control of his body. Jon was the tool. The key to open the door. Jonah shaped the key and turned it.

Viktor is the opposite. He did not choose to come back to life. In fact he had basically accepted his death and was actively suicidal. Jayce brought him back (and I don’t really blame him for that. He didn’t know the consequences and he was trying to save the man he loved). Viktor did however, almost end the world (and succeeded in some timelines? I’m confused). Now it’s hard to say how much of that was Viktor. He was heavily influenced by the arcane, but Jon was also heavily influenced by the Eye (not that you can really compare them). We don’t know how sentient the arcane is but we can guess that its main goal/instinct is to spread. If it worked through Viktor or if it was simply influenced him, altering his thoughts and feelings to more easily rationalize what he was doing. Either way Viktor would not have done what he did without the arcane. But he did do it. The arcane isn’t a person. You can’t really put all the blame there. And we did see that Viktor was still in there, deep down, enough that he could change his mind. Meaning that to a certain degree, he did choose it. Viktor’s actions were his own, even if they were influenced. He’s the most responsible for what happened. Jayce also carries some responsibility for bringing Viktor back in the first place and creating hextech alongside Viktor, but again, he did not know the consequences of that. Neither did Viktor at first. So how much are they to blame?

I just find it fascinating how such similar events (even if they are still vastly different) happen in two completely different series and how the characters had different levels of agency throughout it.

[timelessbian]

if i had a nickel for every time a sapphic kiss in the mcu ended with the lead of the show incapacitated on the ground i'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened BOTH TIMES

[maareyas]

I wonder if anyone tried viewing that astronaut silver art upside-down because I specifically designed it to look nice and as if he's gently "falling" when viewed in the "correct" viewing angle.

It was going to be in this angle originally but I like the sense of whimsy playing around with the rotation/having the sky and "ground plane" reverse. I also REALLY love how this reverse angle makes this section in particular looks because the edge of the planet provides a nice, emphasizing divide while ALSO looking like it's the moons that's behind silver's head

[laniemae]

Ok as much as I’m losing my shit over Hiroaki being confirmed gay I’m just thinking how it’s really sad thinking about he dated all these girls not because he actually liked them but just to boost his popularity. I can imagine he was bragging so much to Yanagi about sleeping with all these women and even why he did it in the first place, is because he doesn’t want to believe he’s actually gay and not into women and desperately trying to convince himself that he’s “normal”. Especially with Hiroaki being such a big celebrity rumours about him being gay would destroy his reputation, especially in Japan. And I could imagine his team set him up to date all these popular girls to try and take down any possible rumours of him being gay.

[iridescentis]

the reason why i just silently reblog posts every time they upload is because i am simply stunned into silence every damn time

like what the fuck am i supposed to say to this

[thoughtfulchaos773]

I don't know, there's something so honest here. This is after Carmy says "You love taking care of people" how he looks at her, and she seems so vulnerable. It just reminds me of that special someone who shares your dreams, failures, and doubts and you know it will be safe. They're just so tender with each other.

Anyone that reacts to this scene is always moved by the connection.

It's very sweet and magnetic, isn't it? Syd is so bare to him in his moment and he's just looking at her falling even harder. I don't know, their connection reminds me how much we need each other to get through life, because it's fucking hard and scary sometimes.

[ghostdrinkssoup]

just finished arcane and I’m sitting here like… what?

….

what?

[habitual-truant]

im actually tweaking the fuck out oh my god. like the credits art. akechi wasnt there but like i know why but like also hes like been so othered and idfk like i cant do this like he sits by himself in leblanc hideout and in the tycoon thing he sits alone with his back turned and and and like he did that to himself but like come on like why cant he have a happy ending what the fuck like this was the only possible outcome for the story to be satisfying but like he doesn’t even have a chance for a redemption arc he gets his shit rocked the MOMENT hes in that typical villan about to have a redemption arc state and like come on man you cannot do this to me like he never even had a fucking chance in the first place. it fucked me up so bad u dont even get it like. stop this right now. the only “happy” ending he gets IS A BAD ENDING. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[1singulargrape]

Sukuna called Yuuji by his full name

Sukuna called. Yuuji by. His full name.

Sukuna??? Called yuuji by??? His full name?!?!!

[chimerafeathers]

there's an essay jumbled up in my brain about dunmeshi's beginning and how clever and deceptive it is as a sleight-of-hand trick that distracts the audience from the depth and scope of the worldbuilding and foreshadowing that's being set up the entire time by dangling zany characters and wacky dishes and biology fun facts in front of us, and how that serves to catch invested viewers off guard when those elements come to the forefront, but also how it works against it with other viewers wanting "more" and not seeing it because the plot bait isn't laid out up front

how people getting frustrated with the characters "not taking things seriously" is mirrored and refuted in the confrontation between Laios and Shuro. how the characters' attitudes aren't just a result of shallow low-stakes "comedy rules" where nothing matters, but are an extension of their personalities (Laios's nonstandard expression of emotions being offputting even to people he knows) and the world and social environment (adventurers being desensitized to death and injury because resurrection magic is commonplace). the way the party refers to "saving Falin" instead of "retrieving Falin's corpse," indicating that they still see her with full personhood, and how that phrasing leads to some readers/viewers believing that Falin is alive in the dragon's stomach, conscious of being slowly digested while the party carelessly fucks around "wasting time." how the weird tonal dissonance makes sense in-universe and yet is deliberately challenged more and more the deeper the party goes

all the character building and pieces of lore slowly weaving together the shape of the larger world, laying the groundwork for the major themes that will surface later. so much is right there in the "low-stakes" early episodes if you know what you're looking for (or pass the perception checks).

it can be so satisfying to see new viewers/readers pick up on the clues even in the earliest "simple" episodes, or notice new things and make connections yourself....and it can also be frustrating to see people dismiss oddities and dissonance as shallow or bad writing because they don't expect a "cooking anime" to have depth like that. why try to question and understand and peel back the layers when you don't expect there to be any layers?

why can't laios take things seriously for once?